Europe opens new labs for food/feed safety

The safety and quality of food and feed are a growing
public concern and research plays an increasingly important role in this sector
to ensure consumers' confidence. The European Commission is therefore setting up
three laboratories to support national authorities in their efforts to keep food
and feed free from dangerous substances.

The three Community Reference Laboratories for heavy
metals, mycotoxins and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) will be opened
today by European Commissioner for Health, Markos Kyprianou at the Commission's
Institute for Reference Materials and Measurements in Geel, Belgium. Heavy
metals, mycotoxins and PAHs are all substances with potentially harmful health
effects that can be found in food. These laboratories will validate testing
methods, develop reference materials and measurements and provide training and
other tools to national laboratories so that food and animal feed can be kept
safe across the EU.

More efficientEU Health Commissioner Markos Kyprianou
said: "A strong pan-European network of Laboratories is essential to create a
more efficient regulatory framework and to boost public confidence in the safety
of our food and feed products. So I welcome the inauguration of these new
Community Reference Laboratories, which will provide essential scientific data
and contribute to informed and responsible policy decisions"

Three Community Reference
Laboratories (CRLs) will be opened at the Institute for Reference Materials and
Measurements:

· Heavy metals: these substances are present in all
foodstuffs. Some are important for our nutrition, but others, such as lead,
cadmium and mercury, have no nutritional value and can indeed in some cases
contribute to serious illnesses such as cancer, or damage the central nervous
system.

· Mycotoxins: these are substances produced by fungi
growing on food and animal feed. Estimates show that up to 20% of food products
may contain mycotoxins, which can cause anything from mild to serious illness.

· Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs): these are
compounds which can enter food during production processes. Some of the
compounds can cause cancer or DNA mutation.